


Poetry

by Quecksilver_Eyes



Series: Narnia Musings [33]
Category: Chronicles of Narnia (Movies), Chronicles of Narnia - All Media Types, Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-17
Updated: 2019-08-17
Packaged: 2020-09-06 08:20:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20288347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quecksilver_Eyes/pseuds/Quecksilver_Eyes
Summary: It's a silly thing, Caspian thinks as he stares at Edmund, to be quite so enamoured with a smile. Edmund is dripping wet and beaming as brightly as Caspian has only ever seen his sister Susan do when she forgets that she is being watched - when Peter scoops her into his trembling arms, when Lucy jumps on her back, squealing and screeching with laughter, when Edmund makes pun after pun with his lips by her ears, his freckles all but glowing with contentment.Edmund has never looked like this - or perhaps he has, when they were pulled back into Narnia by Miraz' bloody hands, by old Narnia's desperation buried deep in the dying soil. Perhaps he took one step into Narnia and its air, felt the sea water on his skin, and beamed the way he does now, in a way that makes him almost look the age he should be, if there was no Narnia, no talking beasts, no magic and no love weaved into his dying, his living body. His face is a pale, freckleless thing, and the clothes look foreign to Caspian, all bleached and buttoned and too small-too big on Edmund's lanky body. His dark hair is dripping and wet against his skull, and his hands look rough in a way no sword can do.





	Poetry

> _Ich könnte nicht in Ruhe sterben, nicht in Frieden leben, wenn ich dein Lächeln nie wieder sehen dürfte._
> 
> _(I couldn't die nor live in peace if I were to never see your smile again.)_

It's a silly thing, Caspian thinks as he stares at Edmund, to be quite so enamoured with a smile. Edmund is dripping wet and beaming as brightly as Caspian has only ever seen his sister Susan do when she forgets that she is being watched - when Peter scoops her into his trembling arms, when Lucy jumps on her back, squealing and screeching with laughter, when Edmund makes pun after pun with his lips by her ears, his freckles all but glowing with contentment.

Edmund has never looked like this - or perhaps he has, when they were pulled back into Narnia by Miraz' bloody hands, by old Narnia's desperation buried deep in the dying soil. Perhaps he took one step into Narnia and its air, felt the sea water on his skin, and beamed the way he does now, in a way that makes him almost look the age he should be, if there was no Narnia, no talking beasts, no magic and no love weaved into his dying, his living body. His face is a pale, freckleless thing, and the clothes look foreign to Caspian, all bleached and buttoned and too small-too big on Edmund's lanky body. His dark hair is dripping and wet against his skull, and his hands look rough in a way no sword can do.

And yet, Caspian looks at him and sees only green eyes and steady hands, and a silver tongue. And yet, Caspian looks at him and sees all the freckles he remembers, all the dryad kisses that raised the four Kings and Queens of Old, along Edmund's jaw and down Lucy's throat, fluttering on Susan's eyelids and atop Peter's knuckles, a dancing flurry of golden red on all their skin.

Edmund is smiling at him, now, rather than looking at the sea, the boy they were dragged on board with, Reepicheep or his _sister_. He smiles and smiles and smiles at him, with all his teeth and his eyes gleaming, and Caspian feels as if the ship under him might creak and groan and sink from it all. He smiles back, and wraps a blanket around Edmund, his hands as hungry for touch as his eyes are for that smile. He doesn't talk, can't quite untangle his tongue from the knot it has tied itself in. _I never thought I'd see you again_, he wants to say, and _I've missed you so much I could hardly breathe from it all, did you realise how I'd drop at your feet if only you'd ask me to? Did you realise that I haven't stopped thinking of you, smiling from the victory of it all, your chainmail dipped in blood, your hands sore and open, your eyes so soft I could have drowned in them?_

He doesn't. Instead, he rubs his hands along Edmund's shoulders and tries not to think of all the ways his skin tingles from the contact, even through the fabric. And Edmund laughs.

(So does Lucy, somewhere behind them, the kind of laughter that makes a dryad's knees go weak. The wood under them shifts and the little blond boy screams something about an embassy and a telegram. Whatever those are.)

* * *

There are times, when Caspian looks into the mirror and sees his uncle smirking back at him, with blood dripping from his cheeks, his lips cracked and raw, a crown much too big, much too heavy on his head, his dying curls. There are times when Caspian looks at himself and sees a man - a boy - who drove a sword through all that raised him, when he was unarmed and kneeling and surrendered. There are times when he stands in front of himself and can't untangle himself from all that has driven Narnia underground and left them to choke on their own faith, their memories.

There are times when Caspian is just another Caspian, wearing a crown that isn't his, spitting poison at people who did not want him sitting on their throne. There are times when Caspian is a Telmarine the way his uncle was, the way his aunt and his father and all his ancestors were.

He wakes up.

Or he splashes his face with cold water or he takes a deep breath or he sits down and looks at all the laws he's amended, all the decrees he's issued, talks to old Narnia about all those worries heavy on his skin.

And then he gathers all the bile he's swallowed down his entire life, all the things he kept locked behind his teeth and in his knuckles, all the questions he asked and never got an answer to, and he spits it at his uncle's feet.

_Fuck you. Fuck you and all the lies you've told me, all this blood and dirt under your fingernails, fuck you, I hope you rot in your grave and feel it all._

* * *

Edmund has grown, his hair in loose curls, his hands big and bony, his legs long and lanky the way they are just before a growth spurt. "He's gonna have one in spring", Lucy says and drapes herself on Caspian's lap with a laugh. "And he's gonna complain about it the whole way through." She reaches into Caspian's hair and pulls out a strand of it, wraps it around her finger. "You should probably get him something for his joints." Caspian smiles and thanks her.

The blond boy (Eustace, their cousin, who has nothing in common with them - except he shares the dip of Lucy's nose and the arch of Edmund's eyebrows, the colour of Susan's eyes and the way Peter smiles) looks at them and scoffs, his lips curled around words Caspian doesn't understand. His Narnian is a lot better than it was, but Eustace speaks it so fast and in such a strange way, with words he doesn't recognise, and Caspian has given up on trying to understand more than general meaning.

He turns to Lucy with an arched eyebrow but she just giggles. "He's parroting his mother again." She rolls her eyes and sticks her tongue out at her cousin who looks like he might want to throw something at her. He doesn't. Caspian grins at him.

_Eustace_. What a name.

* * *

Eustace snores. Purposefully. Possibly.

Caspian drags his pillow over his ears and glares in his general direction, his legs dangling from the hammock they've put up in a cabin meant for one, and Edmund, who is buried in blankets on the floor next to him, giggles softly.

"You hold him down and I stick corks up his nose?" Caspian groans into his pillow.

Edmund just keeps giggling. Bastard. Pretty bastard, with his eyes and his smiles and his ability to sleep through Eustace' snoring. "I don't think you should be killing children, your Majesty", he says, and there's a looseness in his voice, a teasing tilt that Caspian has never heard before.

He sits up. "I can't sleep", he says. "And sleep deprivation robs people of their sound judgement. Or so I hear."

Edmund laughs. "Should I tell the captain? Or the crew?"

Caspian throws his pillow at him. "You could tell me how you sleep through it."

"Practise", Edmund says, and drags a blanket over his head.

Bastard.

* * *

The thing about having Edmund back in Narnia, on this ship and for Caspian to look at, to speak to, is that all the longing sitting in his bones, tightening his skin, is suddenly like syrup sticking to the back of his throat, like an itch in his knuckles that he can never reach. Edmund smiles and smiles and smiles, and there's freckles blooming on his skin with every passing day, his back straighter every time Caspian turns to look at him, and _oh_, he shouldn't have written down every thought he had about those lips, about that jaw, about that throat. About those hands.

It all burns in the back of his mind every time Edmund touches him, every time he looks at him, his eyes bleeding green, his lips curled upwards.

_(_

_I've been yearning, you see_  
_For your eyes_  
_ Your lips_  
_ Your hands on me_  
_ Or; perhaps_  
_ Your teeth in your lips_  
_ or mine_  
_ Not a day passes wherein I don't look at your sister's horn_  
_ And ache for you_

_Did you know?_  
_ Can you feel it?_  
_ All the way there, behind a wardrobe and woods and train stations and caves, and centuries away?_  
_ How I can still see you; exhausted and bleeding and with Telmarine anguish all over you - your arms around your brother, so tender that I thought I might bleed to death from witnessing it?_  
_ How I think of this battle and can only think of you, silver tongued and smiling, your shoulders loose as you look at my uncle and the Lords who see an eleven year old boy. And still, they are scared of you._

_I hope I may see you again. I hope I may tell you how my chest aches and my hands shake and my voice gives out at the thought of you._

_)_

Edmund smiles at him and Caspian's heart beats high in his throat.

Lucy laughs.

* * *

Kissing Edmund is like lying under a big old oak tree during a summer storm, and Caspian curls his arms around him, his fingers into his shirt and ignores Eustace' snoring behind them, the way the ocean coos and sways under them, the way dryad wood creaks and flutters under their feet.

There is a poem, here, somewhere, in between Edmund's lips and pressed against his rib cage, in the curl of his hair and the bend of his knees, in the little sounds he makes against Caspian's lips.

He will write it, one day, this poem.


End file.
